Pender's Blog

Open Source Community Tepid on Microsoft Announcement

Last week's big to-do about Microsoft offering
up some of its protocols and otherwise paying EU-mandated lip service to
"openness" drew a surprisingly mixed reaction from the open source
community -- surprising because it wasn't entirely negative.

Linux guru Linus Torvalds, in fact, seemed downright
pleased with Microsoft, if still a little skeptical of the company's motives.
Other folks took more of a wait-and-see
attitude, with some complaining that Microsoft isn't releasing code to open
source and is still going to charge license fees for some patents.

Here's something the open source folks might want to consider: Microsoft isn't
an open source company and isn't going to be any time soon. So don't hold your
breath for Steve Ballmer and company to throw open the gates (um, no pun intended,
but you can read one there if you want to) any more than they have to.

And Microsoft: Again, please stop with the whole Magnanimous Microsoft act.
We all know that you're responding to the EU, and that's OK.